Freezing rain, snow spread to Northeast as South shivers

A pedestrian walks along a snow-covered street on Wednesday, Jan. 16 in Albany, N.Y.

By Ian Johnston and Andrew Mach, NBC News

A winter storm brought snow and freezing rain into the Northeast on Wednesday, causing hazardous morning commutes and prompting school closings and delays.

The storm flooded some roadways in and around New York with heavy rains and dumped nearly a foot of snow in the Hudson Valley, NBCNewYork.com reported.

“Right now, we have light snow in New York, light snow in New Jersey, with heavier snow to the north in Worcester (Mass.), and snow coming down in Boston pretty heavy as well,” forecaster Tom Niziol said on the Weather Channel Wednesday. “Visibility is down to a quarter of a mile in Worcester and Boston right now.”

Up to six inches of snow fell from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts and Maine, while the New York City metropolitan area was glazed by sleet that turned into rain, leaving at least an inch of slush, according to AccuWeather.com.

The brief storm offered a taste of the frigid conditions in store later this week when an arctic air mass from Canada is expected to roll into New England, said AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski.

The messy weather prompted hundreds of school closings and delayed openings in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, including 600 throughout Connecticut alone, NBCConnecticut.com reported.

It also delayed flights into and out of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

In Boston, flights at Logan Airport were delayed 30 to 45 minutes, according to the FAA flight delay information map. People traveling through New York’s La Guardia Airport were delayed an average of one hour and 35 minutes, and traffic destined for Philadelphia International Airport was delayed an average of 59 minutes.

The South, meantime, was being hit by an ice storm.

“Freezing rain will continue through Wednesday morning in parts of the South, mainly across the Lower Mississippi and Tennessee Valleys,” the National Weather Service said on its website.